Friday, July 15, 2011

Vincent Zhen Post 1 - SYEP 2011

Vincent Zhen
7.15.11

Blag 1

Hester Street Collaborative is stationed in an office half sub-surface. The small staff of about 5 hinted at a tight community. Mauricio is this year’s SYEP mentor. A day long introduction of how the company works started with past projects, their participants, what it entailed and its outcomes. After this was a briefing on what we as SYEP members would do to assist and participate in HSC’s projects. There was an introduction of all the SYEP members and HSC staff as well.
Our first project was the silk screen project. The first half of the day was dedicated to making personal logos. Before this was a short lesson on typography and alphabet design. The second half was used to take these personal logos and create a final design by taking our raw designs and scanning them into the computer. We used Adobe Illustrator to take these raw designs and creating a smoother version. A 2.0 if you will. Using the Live Trace software in Illustrator, we could sand the rougher edges of our designs which were later transferred into a transparency.
The next day we could put the design into a shirt by process of seriography (Silkscreen). The process is done as follows:
Clean the screen (wash and dry)
Apply emulsion (emulsion is photosensitive)
Use a scoop to apply a thin screen of emulsion onto the screen
Tape transparency onto screen
“Burn” screen (put weight on top of screen for pressure)
Wash screen and dry screen to wash off ‘loose’ emulsion
Tape edges of screen to ward off unwanted splotches of paint
Test screen picture (flood and press ink)
If satisfied, press onto desired medium.

Tips:
Keep lines in transparency thick enough to allow ink to seep through easily which will reduce faded lines in medium.
Center the picture on the shirt using a piece of tape as reference.
Do not apply pressure when flooding. Just allow a smooth fill.
Apply pressure only when pressing.
Make sure the squeegee is wide enough to press the entire picture.
Make sure the color has enough contrast against medium.
Cover any and all exposed unused emulsion. Most light will harden emulsion or at least reduce photosensitive quality.


We visited the garden about 3 times. The garden is usually tended to by the school right next to it but since school is out during the summer, it is our responsibility to uphold the garden for the children next school year. We learned about several different types of plants the children were growing; grapes, cherries, mint, cabbage, etc… We watered the plants, got rid of some weeds, filled the watering barrels, and moved the compost from a couple basins to a pit. Along the way we found worms and a dead mouse.





This is my design for the personal logo project. This was put onto a shirt and later put on the cover of my notebook.

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